IN Senate to Consider Game Restriction Bill
"You become the character, for better or for worse," said Simpson on video games, pointing out the seemingly age-old video game tradition of "kicking (a prostitute) out of a car and then beating her to death." She added, "If you think (children) are not playing these games because there's an 'M' on the box, you're badly mistaken."
Industry trade organizations such as the Entertainment Software Association and Entertainment Merchants Association opposed the bill.
Currently, ESRB content ratings are voluntarily enforced by retailers, similarly to MPAA ratings in the film industry. Various attempts have been made to enforce the ratings by law, though such measures have typically been struck down on constitutional grounds. This current bill is currently on track to continue on to the full Indiana Senate for voting.
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Dynotaku
replyEvery single one of these laws (to my knowledge) has been shot down because of first amendment issues.
It worries me that so many of our lawmakers have such a feeble grasp on the laws of our country.-
The U.S. Constitution can be interpreted in any number of ways and there are exceptions to the First Amendment therefore leading to gray areas such as this. Not to say this qualifies as an exception or whatever, but some people just interpret it entirely different from others. That's why we have redundancy in this country anyway. If it is unconstitutional then the Judiciary branch or Executive branch (or Legislative branch depending on the case) will take care of it.
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Proposals like this are only to make the senator/represenative throwing it out their look good/get their name in the press.
Cable TV has much greater explicit content than a fair majority of most video games. Video games are just an easy thing to bash because typically only teenagers and young adults play them.-
I don't think you are correct in assuming that children and teens are the majority of people who play video games.
This is just for MMOs but still is very interesting.
http://www.projectmassive.org/player_results3.html#q2
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Though I agree that the majority of game players are not kids and teenagers, but I think MMO' will give you the result youa re looking for for 2 reasons I can think of of th emoment.
1) MMO's to me (this just might be where I am at) for the most are played by older generation of players.
2) The majority of MMO's are rated T.-
I wasn't drawing my conclusions from the project massive data. It is just the most easily available hard data on game player demographics I know about.
I'm 32 so I'm definitely not a child or teen. Nearly everyone I know plays video games of one kind or other. My grandpa, my parents, my uncles, aunts, cousins, co-workers and friends. The only people I know who don't play video games are my 2 and 3 year old nieces.
I would prefer the ESRB to actually work since it is voluntary. As others have pointed out, kids see R rated movies all the time and no one is freaking out about it, trying to pass laws to replace the mpaa's system. When I worked in a movie theater I was really surprised how many parents just didn't give a shit about their pre-teen kids going to see R rated slasher flix or soft-core.
This whole thing is just scare mongering and pandering on the part of the politicians responsible. They can't do anything about things that are important so they waste time targeting a behavior that they think is limited to such a small group of people that it won't offend anyone "important".
Divide and conqueror is the strategy of the day is it not?
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